As the size of integrated circuits shrinks, the number of devices within an integrated circuit has risen. For example, a rule of thumb common called Moore's Law states that the number of transistors in a state of the art integrated circuit generally doubles every eighteen months. For many years this rule of thumb has generally been true. Thus, the increase in the number of cells within an integrated circuit has grown exponentially rather than linearly. Obviously, over the past several years the number of cells within a single integrated circuit has virtually exploded.
This tremendous and rapid increase in the number of active devices within an integrated circuit has come about as a result of innovation and changes in the way that the devices are designed and fabricated. Thus, many different issues have been overcome in accomplishing this increase in the capacity of integrated circuits. At the same time, however, this increase in the complexity and capacity of integrated circuits has created new challenges in regard to other aspects of integrated circuit fabrication, such as inspection.
Integrated circuits are typically inspected throughout the fabrication process, both to ensure that the processes used to fabricate the integrated circuits are in control, and also to ensure that the structures formed by the various processes have the proper characteristics, and are not malformed, scratched, or contaminated. For a variety of reasons, inspections of the substrates used in integrated circuit fabrication, such as semiconductor wafers and masks and reticles, have become much more complex than they previously were. For example, the structures being formed are much smaller than they previously were, as described above. This has resulted in the inspection systems becoming commensurately more complex, so as to be able to adequately inspect the smaller structures. For this and other reasons, inspection systems require more set up and tuning than in times past, in order to provide the desired benefits.
Unfortunately, training on such equipment typically requires that either the vendor travels to the customer site, or the customer travels to the vendor site. Additionally, set up or other maintenance of the equipment often requires the vendor to travel to the customer site, if the customer is unable to achieve the desired results on their own. Such travel is expensive and time consuming.
What is needed, therefore, is a system by which an inspection tool can be operated remotely, so that setup, inspection, and training can be accomplished remotely, without having to be physically in front of the inspection tool.